


The Sky Grew Black

by KayGryph



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Briefly Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-09-16
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:03:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4376552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayGryph/pseuds/KayGryph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wilds of the Free Marches, a brutal attack on one of his clan forces Thalon Lavellan to face the grim fate that could await the Dalish if the violence between templars and mages swallows the world. Alone, Thalon travels south to the Temple of Sacred Ashes, where his fate - and the world's - will be forever changed. Far to the north, in the land that once belonged to Thalon's ancestors, a young and brilliant mage uncovers a betrayal that shatters his faith in the gilded illusion he's lived since birth.</p><p>For a thousand years, the mages of Tevinter and the elves of the Dalish have hated one another. Now, the fate of the world may rest on the trust they must learn to find in one another. (Lavellan/Dorian romance from pre-Conclave through the end of Inquisition and Trespasser.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. His True Servants

**Author's Note:**

> Many of the Dalish terms used here are borrowed or adapted from Project Elvhen, one part of the fan-driven Thedas Language Project led by FenxShiral to expand and add depth to the known languages of the Dragon Age world. For more information about the project, read [HERE](http://fenxshiral.tumblr.com/post/123337238233/welcome-to-the-thedas-language-project).

_At Shartan’s word, the sky_   
_Grew black with arrows._   
_At Our Lady’s, ten thousand swords_   
_Rang from their sheaths,_   
_A great hymn rose over Valarian Fields gladly proclaiming:_   
_Those who had been slaves were now free._

_-Shartan 10:1_

 

 **Part 1**  
_Cloudreach, 9:41 Dragon_

Thalon perched in the lower branches of the oak, hidden in the dappled leaves from the eyes of the soldiers camped below.

A late chill hung over the forests of the Wildervale, and the three men in the glade - one might have been a woman, but Thalon couldn’t be sure - had crouched near their fire for warmth. The firelight burned palely in their burnished steel shields, mirrored over the painted red and black sigil of a naked sword wreathed in flames.

_Templars._

Thalon’s heart sank into the pit of his stomach. He had suspected templar knights when the hunters spoke of soldiers clad in heavy plate, but he’d hoped they would turn out to be common thugs or mercenaries who’d stolen the armor off some corpses. The Chantry’s bloodhunters had crossed Clan Lavellan’s path before, in pursuit of mages escaped from their _shemlen_ Circles, but these were the first Thalon had encountered since the clan’s trek northward to escape the war in the south.

Apostates though he and the Keeper were, the Circles at Kirkwall, Ostwick, Markham and the rest had always turned a willful blind eye to their presence in the Free Marches - so long as the Dalish clan never gave the Chantry reason to hunt them. The Keeper had taught him the templars were men and women to be respected, many of them brave and devout, who wanted to serve the greater good even if that desire was too often misguided.

That had been before Kirkwall, before the Circles rebelled and the mages and templars went to war. These men…their intentions were not so honorable.

“If I’d caught meself a knife-ear I’d have strung him by his scrawny neck from the nearest tree, same as that mage girl in the Vimmarks,” muttered the thickset templar closest to the campfire, the one with a curly head of hair the color of straw. “Mage or no mage, savages are good as apostates, with them demon-gods of theirs.”

“Elf boys are too pretty to string from a tree,” sneered the second templar, the one Thalon thought was a woman. “You know Ronnet. Can’t keep himself in his trousers.”

“And you can’t keep your tongue in your mouth, Beatrice,” grunted the third, who sat a ways apart from the others. He wore an enormous greathelm with adornments of copper filigree in the shape of vine leaves around the visor. On his massive gauntlets, Thalon saw encrusted blood.

“The elf whelp didn’t last long after me and Ronnet left him, I can promise you.” The templar tossed the last of their kindling on the fire. “He’d stopped squealing a while before then.”

Behind him in the tree, Thalon heard Ashala tighten her grip on her bow, arrow nocked. Thalon sent her a sharp look over his shoulder and shook his head, motioning her to climb to a better vantage point higher in the tree. He was sure there were more templars than these three, possibly on patrol or scouting the path ahead, and he didn’t want to be taken unawares if they returned - but that wasn’t all that worried him. Ashala’s look promised trouble. When roused, the huntress’s rage came on black and swift as a summer storm. For the moment, she did as he bade and vanished into the foliage.

 _Da’en’ansal_ , Thalon sighed. While the templars below quarreled, Thalon hooked his right hand to grip the staff bound at his back and raised his left to signal Sathari. The creak of her bow as she drew was lost in the rustle of wind through the leaves. The templars heard nothing. Thalon dropped his hand.

Arrows sang from sinew bowstrings and the straw-haired templar went down, Sathari’s arrow in his thigh. The second, the woman, raised her shield with a strangled shout, and the arrow meant for her shoulder glanced off the polished metal. Thalon dropped from the tree, staff in hand, and hurled a glyph of paralysis at her feet. A ring of silvery runes sprang from the ground, swallowing the forest in a blaze of light, and the woman and the straw-haired templar froze in their tracks. The third templar, the one who wore the greathelm, staggered back at the sight of his comrades incapacitated and ripped his sword from its scabbard.

Thalon straightened his stance and stared down the greathelm templar with eyes like chips of ice. “Bid the rest of your friends surrender.” His staff rested firmly in his palm, but held at his side and not wielded aggressively. “We do not want blood.”

Boots crashed toward them through the underbrush. As he’d expected, there were more templars than these three. Two of them bullrushed into the clearing, one armed with a sword and shield, the other brandishing a two-handed greataxe. The greathelm templar called out to them, but before his cry had ended, Ashala’s hunters dropped from the trees above them and had knives at their throats. Thalon had not moved.

“I warned you once.” His face was hard as he strode toward the greathelm. “ _Drop your weapon._ ”

The templar spat a guttural slur at him, but his sword clattered to the ground. The twins Saharel and Sathari forced the man to his knees and Ashala tore off the greathelm. Beneath was a man with balding dark hair and watery blue eyes sick with hatred. Dark circles ringed his eyes and flaps of loose skin sagged from his cheeks.

“We haven’t killed any of your men, though we’ve more than just cause to do you harm.” Thalon’s voice was clear and calm. “Whatever business you have in the Wildervale, you had none attacking my clan. We abide peaceably in the Free Marches and have never interfered with the Order, as any of your noblemen and Chantry mothers can testify.”

“Maker piss on the Chantry,” the greathelm templar snarled. “The Orlesian bitch on the Sunburst Throne’s gone over to you mages and demon worshippers. I’ll slit my own throat before I see mages run amok in the country to slaughter good folk.” He spat at Thalon’s feet. “You and your kind deserve to be put down in the dirt like dogs.”

“You’ve mistaken us for dogs when it’s wolves you see.” Ashala had her knife under the templar’s chin. “Wolves have fangs, _shem_.”

“The soft elf runt we hog-tied didn’t have no fangs,” the templar with the greataxe sneered. He had a wide jaw and a squashed, meaty face punctuated by two small dark eyes. “Whimpered with his tail ‘twixt his legs like any good dog what’s learnt his place.”

Thalon saw the rage flash in Ashala’s eyes. In one motion she wheeled and flung her knife at the templar who had spoken, driving it clean through his hand to pin him to the tree behind him. The templar screamed. “That _elf_ has a name: Ghilen, of Clan Lavellan,” Ashala seethed. “And I will see you _beg_ like a dog before I’m through.”

“Ashala!” Thalon warned. The huntress bristled and grit her teeth, but said no more. Thalon turned to the templar in the greathelm, whom he took for their leader. “The Sunburst Throne? You mean the Divine?”

The greathelm templar laughed, a thin and cruel laugh that made the loose skin at his jaws quiver. “Justinia? Phah! That fat hag’s as _divine_ as my hairy ass. Go on and let your she-elf cut our throats, knife-ear. I’ve nothing to fear from the Maker. We who follow the Lord Seeker against the Chantry’s corruption are His true servants.”

Ashala hesitated and looked at Thalon. Lord Seeker? He’d never heard the title named among the ranks of the Chantry. Could it refer to some templar commander? One who had led the templars into war against the mages? Thalon understand little of the inner hierarchy of the Chantry, but he did know templars were bound by oath to the Chantry and to the Divine in Val Royeaux. It was the Chantry that gave the templars lyrium, and once reliant on its fire in their blood, the Chantry had them on its leash. Could lyrium withdrawal be the reason the templars in front of him looked so haggard and pale? They all shared the look, he saw now, a hungry and wild look.

“What are you talking about?” Thalon demanded. “Have the templars left the Chantry?”

“Those of us who haven’t had our balls cut off,” jeered the woman templar from behind him. The paralysis glyph had worn off, and she and the straw-hair with the arrow in his thigh had been bound on their knees with the rest.

The greathelm made a throaty noise of disgust. “The heretic lapdogs in Val Royeaux can answer Justinia’s Conclave if they have a wish to play at talks of peace with maleficarum and abominations.” He shambled toward Thalon, teeth bared and eyes unfocused. “We won’t let this war end till every mage in Thedas is Tranquil or buried. I’ll see every apostate from here to Cumberland strung up for the crows…and I aim to start with _you_.”

Thalon saw the glint of steel in the templar’s hand and reacted without thought. He slammed his staff into the earth, the Veil opened at his command, and the raw essence of the Fade boiled in his blood like cold fire. Veins of dark purple light arced from his outstretched hand toward the templar, whose mouth twisted in a snarl of defiance, but the faint traces of lyrium in his blood were no match. Thalon saw hatred burn hot in the templar’s eyes and the dagger drop from numb hands an instant before the magic overtook him and he cooked alive inside his armor. The racking screams split the forest and seemed to Thalon to echo through the trees around them long after the templar fell dead at his feet.

Thalon exhaled, and the Veil drew closed. In its wake, there was the reek of burnt meat and the cold gratification that stuck in his chest like a poison thorn.

Ashala spat on the dead man’s charred corpse. The woman templar began to chant an Andrastian verse: “Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked and do not falter.” Her lyrium-hungry eyes stared back at him, dark with the same hate he’d seen in the greathelm, but there was _fear_  there as well.

“We can’t let them go, Thalon,” Ashala insisted. “They know where to find the clan, and they’ll come back. These aren’t Chantry, he said so himself. They don’t care about--”

Thalon lifted a hand and she held her tongue. He couldn’t think through the hot howl of adrenaline in his blood. Ashala was right. These templars did not want to hear reason. They wanted blood. After a grim, fraught pause, he gave the order.

“Kill them.”

The templar with the greataxe died begging as Ashala had promised, and the woman died with the Chant on her lips. The rest died without a word on the hunters’ blades, their blood red and wet over the soft moss at their feet. When it was done, the hunters shifted uneasily and even Ashala did not so much as smile. They had wanted vengeance for Ghilen, but now that they had it they were not so certain.

“Bury their bodies and take anything of value we can sell or repurpose,” Thalon instructed. “Make sure you find any letters or orders they might have carried. We need to find out what they were doing here and whether we can expect more unwelcome company soon.”

As the hunters went to work, Thalon motioned to Ashala and drew her aside. “Go to the Keeper. Tell her what we’ve seen.” At the question in Ashala’s look, he simply said, “I will return later. I need time to myself.”

“As you say, _ma’sael_ ,” Ashala promised, but Thalon felt her eyes on him as he tread silently off into the forest, alone.

 


	2. Fear and Pride

His feet carried him into a hollow where the sycamores grew tall and green, lichen clinging to their flaky bark. The forest here was carpeted thickly with moss and dead leaves that hushed his footsteps. A family of deer watched him pass by the river where they drank, but their dull stares betrayed no panic and they did not flinch at his approach. These parts were too remote for hunting. The deer had lived all their lives unafraid of the death that came on a swift arrow.

Once, his people had been like the deer - unafraid and ageless, stirred not to fear or hatred by the “quicklings” that stumbled through their world, but to curiosity and pity. Dalish legend said humans had put the quickness of mortality into the elves’ blood and robbed them of _uthenera_ , the eternal sleep that had been the gift of their immortal nature. Perhaps it was when they learned to fear death that the elves of the ancient past had led great Arlathan to its ruin at the hands of the Tevinter Imperium. For their distant descendants, the Dalish, fear had become a way of life - fear and hatred, and pride.

“Pride is only fear in disguise,” Halahn had told him once in a rare moment of seriousness. “One who is proud fears to lose his reputation, or the acknowledgment and admiration of others, or self-worth. Where there is no fear, there can be no pride.”

“Surely pride cannot always be an evil,” Thalon had argued. “What of pride in one’s heritage, in the traditions passed on by our elders? Are we not to be proud that we are _elvhen_?”

Halahn had regarded him through a curtain of ashen braids, eyes honey-dark with a strange sorrow. “To feel pride in a thing betrays a sense of ownership. You do not own what it is to be _elvhen_ , nor do I. We do not own the traditions brought down to us from time forgotten. What pride can we take in what is not ours to possess?” He’d looked older, then, and gazed hard into Thalon’s eyes. “Remember this, _vhen’an_ : It is not by chance that Pride is among the most persuasive spirits that walk the Fade.”

Thalon sank onto the crooked roots of a sycamore and closed his eyes. A gentle wind - crisp and scented of spring - sighed through the leaves above him. For one still moment, he could almost pretend Halahn sat beside him - the steady, solid presence he had learned to admire, and later to love. They had sat often together in the quiet of gentle afternoons like this one, after his lessons were finished and the sun hung low in the sky. Halahn would send leaves spiraling in tiny whirlwinds across the forest floor and frighten small woodrats into their holes. When he laughed, the sound had warmed Thalon from the inside until his heart sang.

Thalon drew his legs under him and fought to quiet the chaos within his mind. He could still hear the templar’s scream rattling around his head, saw the burnt body collapse again in convulsions as he watched. Once, perhaps, there had lived a man in the templar’s skin, but he’d long since forgotten his humanity; only a hollow, hungry shell remained, consumed by depraved desires as to make a demon salivate. Truly an abomination worthy of Chantry tale, thought Thalon bitterly. He had given the sick creature the death he’d deserved...and he had _enjoyed_ it.

He drew a slow breath - in and out and in again - but no matter how he tried to center himself, the thoughts came sharp and poisonous from a dark corner of his mind. They’d festered there ever since the hunters returned bearing Ghilen unconscious in their arms. Humans had tied him to a tree stripped naked for sport, they’d said, before they’d beaten him bloody and left him. Had the hunters not chanced upon him in the wood and cut him down, Thalon had little doubt he would have hemorrhaged to death.

Mythal had been with them, and Ghilen would live, but Thalon could not forget the sight of the elf lifeless in front of him, his face - too young even for _vallaslin_ \- near indistinguishable under the bruises and the blood. The memory hardened a knot in Thalon’s chest, cold and cruel as winter ice. For the first time, he knew what _hate_ was, the hate of humans he’d been taught was wrong.

“The clan looks to you for guidance, _da’len_ ,” Istimaethoriel had told him before she sent him into the forest with the hunters. “They are angry and will want blood, but they must see that you are calm. Hate answered with hate will only lead our people to pain and ruin. You are their First. They must learn forgiveness from you.”

 _Forgiveness._ Thalon breathed. _You would know of forgiveness, Keeper, wouldn’t you?_

If Halahn were in his place, would he have killed the templars, or let them live even after what they had done to Ghilen?

 _He would have killed them,_ Thalon told himself. _For the safety of the clan, he would have killed them…but he would have taken no joy in it._

Halahn had been fascinated with humans and their ways. Thalon had once believed his curiosity a product of the fact that his father had escaped life in a _shemlen_ alienage, and knew more of their kind than most among the Dalish. Later, he had realized that curiosity was merely the way of Halahn’s nature. He wanted to learn, to understand. That, he said, was the only way that elves and humans would ever know peace.

“When I am Keeper,” he’d told Thalon once, “every child of the clan will learn the Chant of Light as well as the traditions of Elvhenan. They will pray to the Maker as well as Elgar’nan the All-Father and Mythal the Protector.”

“Whose good would that serve?” Thalon murmured. He remembered - he’d been drunk with afterglow and the heady sweet scent of sweat and pine needles that was Halahn. Bronzed skin pressed warm and flushed against his body. “Humans will never worship elven gods, even if you pay lip service to theirs.”

“Perhaps not,” Halahn conceded, “but they may begin to see that we are more than forest savages and apostates. The ancestors named them ‘quicklings,’ but for all that they are slow to learn and slow to understand. A child must be taken by the hand before they will follow.” Halahn had chuckled. “Perhaps their Maker will talk more than our gods after all, and if not, where’s the harm in one more voiceless god to ignore our prayers?”

When Halahn spoke it was impossible not to believe in what he believed. His conviction had been infectious. When you watched him work the raw ether of the Fade as effortlessly as a halla ran sure-footed and swift, you knew he was meant for greatness. The sheer promise of that greatness had made Thalon love him, made him want to see what Halahn would become and what he could achieve.

But Halahn was dead, and memories and should-have-beens would avail Thalon nothing.

 _Neither will hiding here from the clan,_ Thalon sighed. The sky through the branches above him had gone to orange flame as the sun slid into the earth’s embrace. It was time to return and learn what Ashala had found on the templars.

If they had spoken the truth, and the templars had split from the Chantry…well...he couldn’t yet bring himself to face what that might mean.


	3. Never Again Shall We Submit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Finally got through the end of Chapter 3! This was a long one and a hard one to write. **Trigger warning** for descriptions of physical violence and implied rape. Coming in the next chapter...the man you've all been waiting for...DORIAN! Stay tuned, friends. (Also, [follow me on Tumblr!](http://ourinquisitorialness.tumblr.com/))
> 
> Many of the Dalish terms used here are borrowed or adapted from Project Elvhen, one part of the fan-driven Thedas Language Project led by FenxShiral to expand and add depth to the known languages of the Dragon Age world. For more information about the project, read [HERE](http://fenxshiral.tumblr.com/post/123337238233/welcome-to-the-thedas-language-project). You can also find FenxShiral's lexicon [HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3719848/chapters/8237548).

The sunlight beneath the forest canopy had softened to gloam by the time Thalon glimpsed the train of aravels through the trees ahead. There was comfort in the sight of scarlet sails aglow in the torchlight. The patriarch of the Lavellan herd, an ancient white stag with antlers carved in ornate spirals, lifted his head when Thalon passed and bleated a disinterested challenge.

Where were the sentinels? Thalon cocked his head to listen but heard only the murmur of voices around communal fires. There should have been laughter, too, and song - the _Sulahn Sul’Andruil_ carried to the sky on wine-loose tongues as the sun set on the last day of _Ghi’myelan’nirathe_ \- but the voices in the Dalish camp tonight were steeped with anger and fear.

“ _Fenedhis lasa!”_

Anger, for the moment, seemed to prevail. Thalon crept barefoot down the mossy embankment and reached outward to press himself upon the Veil. Tendrils of the Fade bled into the world around him, summoned by his focus of will the way a needle tugged a thread. Thalon wreathed himself in the grey till he was a shadow among shadows and moved to hover just beyond the circle of firelight.

Half the clan was gathered in the glade. Through the press of bodies, Thalon spied Ashala with the Twins at her back. Even at a distance, there was no mistaking the black fire in her eyes - the look of a wolf with hackles raised. In the one hand she held a blade; the other gripped a half-skinned Marcher hare by the hocks. She attacked the animal savagely with the knife, heedless whether she preserved its fur intact.

“...don’t care what beetle’s crawled up your ass and died, Eralas. A hare’s a blighted _hare_ , and Andruil herself couldn’t sway me otherwise if she fell naked out of a tree singing the _Vir Tanadahl_.”

“ _Teldirthalas_ ,” berated a reedy voice Thalon recognized even before his eyes found the speaker in the crowd. His father’s wiry frame seemed almost comically out of place beside Ashala and her athletically built hunters. _Hahren_ Eralas was a teacher first and a craftsman second - seldom roused to sternness, much less to anger - but his brow drew into severe lines beneath his sweep of silvery hair when Ashala spat Andruil’s name.

“A child of our blood lies at the mercy of Fen’Harel, and you bare your fangs and spit venom at the Creators who guide and protect us like a serpent whose tail was trodden.” Eralas made a low noise of disgust. “You shame your _vallaslin_.”

“Shame? HAH! What would you know of shame?” snarled Ashala. “Do you _hear_ yourself when you speak, or are your ears too stuffed with the dust of a thousand years ago? What good has ever come of bowing to your dead gods? _What good?_ If not for Andruil and her _Fen’Harel’vhallal_  Hunt, none of this would have happened!”

A murmur of outrage rippled through the gathered onlookers. Saharel stood at Ashala’s elbow, his young and hawkish features drawn into a murderous expression; behind them, Sathari palmed her knife in one hand. Thalon searched the faces in the throng for the Keeper, but Istimaethoriel was nowhere in sight. The animosity in the air was thick enough to cleave with Ashala’s skinning knife.

At the center of the standoff stood Ghilen’s mother, Varanni.

The ancestors had a word: _Mi’nas’sal’inan_. Translated literally, “the knife in the soul.” It was a poetically specific turn of phrase, meant to define the heartsick sense of grief felt for a thing lost that could never be regained. Dalish used the word mockingly to describe one of their people who obsessively romanticized the past and pined for the lost empire, but Thalon had known the real _mi’nas’sal’inan_ \- the pain and rage that lodged in the ribcage like a knife. It was not difficult to recognize the hollowness in Varanni’s eyes that he’d once seen reflected in his own.

She had been a young mother and was of an age with Thalon; they had earned their _vallaslin_ less than a month apart. As with all _da’himelan_ , they were all but kin - called one another sister and brother. After her husband Gavunen was killed, Thalon had become a sort of uncle to their shy son, Ghilen.

Varanni had always been a quietly competent woman who did what needed doing without reward, but her silence now was...different. She seemed not even to hear the shouting voices around her or notice the arm Eralas had wrapped protectively around her willowy frame. Her winter-grey eyes were unfocused...lightless. Empty. Somehow that emptiness, that… _nothing_ , was worse than any tears could have been.

“Dread Wolf take me where I stand if I have not said for _months_ that _no one_ leaves the caravan alone,” Ashala seethed. “You cover your ears and eyes and talk of the gods, as if we lived in a world where it could ever _matter_ whether we light a candle to Andraste or Andruil.” She tossed the skinned hare to the ground and plunged her knife halfway to the hilt in the moss at her feet with a wet _thuuck_. “The only gods in this world that matter are the ones _you_ let in like wolves among halla when you sent a boy of _fifteen_ alone into the forest so you could pretend a spirit-woman out of children’s stories cares about your ancient superstitious nugshit!”

Eralas shrank upon himself. “Ghilen…Ghilen insisted I let him Hunt. He _insisted_.” Thalon was startled to hear the faint tremor in his father’s voice - the voice that had not faltered in a thousand retellings of how Fen’Harel betrayed the gods and how the Emerald Knights fell in defense of Halamshiral. Eralas had not been young for many summers, but Thalon could not recall that he had ever looked so old. Shoulders once strong enough to carry Thalon for leagues now seemed withered with age…or was it guilt?

“How could I have known the danger?” Eralas demanded. “Your hunters reported no sign of travelers for weeks, only to find Chantry hounds at our heels! I wouldn’t - Ghilen would _never_ have left the safety of the caravan if _you_ had not been too blinded by your arrogance to see the threat in front of you!”

“You’re the one we call elder of our clan, _hahren_ ,” Saharel growled. “You accuse _us_ of blindness when _your_ eyes are so clouded with age you can’t see the world’s on fire around you!”

“Enough!” Thalon shook off the shadows with a flick of his hand and shouldered through the circle of onlookers to put himself between Ashala and his father. When they saw him, the crowd parted, and the angry murmurs died away until the only sounds were the crackling fire and the discordant songs of the night insects.

“Have you all gone mad?” Thalon demanded. Saharel had the grace to look ashamed, but Ashala pinned him with her wolf’s stare, unflinching. “For all we know, we’re not safe here. Ashala, Saharel - where are the sentries? Why have the halla not been harnessed?”

When they answered with silence, Thalon’s ire flared before he could control himself. “ _Fen’Harel ver’em su an’banal!_ ” He turned a flinty look on his father and the others behind him. “Every minute you waste with pointless blame, you endanger the clan!”

Eralas bowed his head. “Of course, _ma’sael_. You are right.” He looked older then than ever, but a little color seemed to return to him as the urgency of their situation registered. “We should...pack the aravels and ready the clan to depart at the Keeper’s word.” He took Varanni gently by the shoulders with both hands, shaking her gently, and she seemed to startle as though woken from a terrible dream.

“All of you!” Eralas said. “You heard the Keeper’s First. See to your families. Tonight we leave the Wildervale…and pray the Dread Wolf does not hear our steps.”

The crowd began to disperse, each to his own duty, and Thalon exhaled. When he turned to find Ashala, he saw that the huntress and her two shadows had already disappeared. Well, perhaps that was for the best. Thalon did not know that he had the patience to deal with Ashala’s moods right now, and he needed to see to Ghilen before the clan made their journey.

“Thalon.”

Thalon glanced over his shoulder. His father’s expression was grey with worry. “ _Ma’ashalan ysa daral ladara Ghilen. Haran teleolas. Asa halani._ ”

Thalon nodded. “ _Ady_.” He lingered to watch Eralas lead Varanni toward the halla enclosure, battling the guilt that welled like black poison in his chest. He wanted to go to Varanni, to tell her Ghilen would heal and hold her while she cried into his chest to let out the pain...but he didn’t. Too much else required his attention, and he didn’t know where the Keeper had gone or when she would return.

His head had begun to swim with fatigue and stress, but Thalon squared his shoulders and moved down the train of aravels to help fasten canvas sails and secure casks of provisions. Now that they’d been put to the task, Clan Lavellan seemed desperate to leave the campsite before the moon rose. Where they would go, Thalon did not know. North? They might journey a ways into Antiva, but if they pushed too far north, they risked the Tevinter border.

Templars to the south and the west, magisters to the north, and oceans to the east. Was there anywhere in this damned world where his clan could scratch a meager living from the forest, and raise their children free from under the shadow of human politics?

 _A home,_ he thought with a rueful laugh. _That’s what you want for them, Thalon. You and every elf for the last thousand years…_

At the aravel where the hunters had brought Ghilen, Thalon found Ghilethari waiting for him. Her flaxen-gold hair had slipped loose from the braid Thalon had helped her weave that morning, and her shoulders were wilted with exhaustion.

“The Keeper said she had to…seek wisdom from the gods,” Ghilethari explained. “She told me to watch over Ghilen until she came back, but that was hours ago.” She looked up at him with quiet fear in her moss-green eyes. “I did the spells like you taught me, but…Thalon, what’s going to happen?”

Thalon took her shoulders and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ve done just as you should, _da’lath’in_ ,” he reassured her. “Come, let us see if we can wake him.”

The aravel’s inner room was lit with tallow candles and smelled of blood and crushed embrium. Ghilen lay in the narrow bed tucked under a covered alcove against the rear wall. He did not wake or stir even when Thalon gently shook him by the shoulder. The bandage that covered one half of his face had bled through. When Thalon peeled back the layers of sodden linen, Ghilethari’s hand flew to her mouth with a gasp and Thalon had to force himself not to look away.

They had beaten him with gauntleted fists. Where metal met flesh, blotchy green and purple bruises had discolored the skin. One eye was ruined, smashed in when they broke his nose and damaged beyond recovery. Beneath the swollen lid, the bloody red pulp of an eye wept puss and yellowy discharge. Thalon swallowed the lump in his throat, cleaned the wound as best he could, and showed Ghilethari how to layer a clean bandage over the eye packed with elfroot poultice.

At the neck, the skin was raw and red from the rope they’d tied to him--the way humans leashed their dogs. His narrow chest was a patchwork of bruises and lacerations. Thalon worked quickly and methodically, doing his best not to imagine how terrified Ghilen would have been when the templars leveled a blade at his throat, how he would have begged and how they would have laughed as the rope cut into his skin. His mind flew back - the taste of blood in his mouth as he screamed, Halahn’s eyes struggling to focus on him even as his grip loosened around Thalon’s wrist…

“Thalon?”

His sister’s voice shook Thalon from the dark place his thoughts had taken him. Her small hands were caked with blood, but the worry in her eyes was for him. “You were…far away.”

“I’m fine, _da’ean_ ,” Thalon told her with a thin smile that did not reach his eyes. Their father had sent him to take care of his sweet young sister, but it seemed she was doing a better job taking care of him. “Here, now. Summon your focus the way I taught you…”

Ghilethari closed her eyes, and a bluish light began to emanate from her hand. Gently, she pressed her palm to the center of Ghilen’s sweat-damp brow. Almost at once, Ghilen woke with a strangled gasp and lashed out from the bed like a wounded animal, but Thalon caught his arms in a firm but gentle grip and pressed him back down into the bed.

“Easy,” Thalon murmured. “It’s all right. You’re safe, _da’len_. You’re home.”

The one good eye left to Ghilen cast wildly about as if to find demons leering at him from the ceiling rafters. When he saw Thalon, the eye widened and he fell weakly back into the pillow. “Th-Thalon?”

“Yes, it’s me and Ghilethari,” Thalon reassured. “You’re safe with the clan. You’re safe.”

“N-No…nonono…” Ghilen shrank from Thalon’s grasp as tears welled in his one pale and terrified eye. “They said th-they’d find the clan, kill you, k-kill all of you…”

“They didn’t, and they won’t,” said Thalon. “They’re dead, Ghilen. No one will hurt you.”

“They caught me,” the boy carried on. “Two of them and I-I…I tried…” He had started to shake uncontrollably. “They caught me and th-they…with their…” A weak sob worked out of him. “I’m s-so sorry, Thalon… I should have…it’s all m-my… I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Thalon felt a sick swell of grief knot in his stomach. He glanced at his sister, standing frightened and pale at the end of the bed with horror in her eyes, unable to speak. He might have sent her away, shielded her from the horror of human hatred, but one day she would be First, and he could not shelter her forever.

The knot hardened into a ball of lead, rage and guilt and regret feeding off one another until he wanted to scream. _This shouldn’t have happened._ What good were all the Keeper’s efforts, all the sacrifices their clan had made to appease the _shemlen_ magehunters, if they could not protect a _child?_

Thalon had once watched Istimaethoriel turn away a fugitive mage who’d pleaded for protection from the templars on her heels. The girl wasn’t Dalish, but she was _elvhen_. Of the People. Thalon remembered the bright fear and the tears in her eyes, eyes so like his sister’s that his gut had wrenched to look at her. _Help me, lethal’lin_ , she’d begged. Whether the templars had caught her in the end, he didn’t know and did not wish to know.

For the first time since he’d recited the words the day he received his _vallaslin_ , Thalon understood:

_Never again shall we submit._


End file.
